Improving Nurse Caregiving by Design Details

Exploration in applying Glass and InMemory technology to help prevent medication dispensing errors in hospitals.

In this project we chose to explore a specific task of a hospital nurse – medication dispensing. We looked at healthcare from the eye of a designer, with empathy for the nurses and the patient. Our goal was to support the nurse and help eliminate errors that can result in patient’s fatalities. We observed and interviewed nurses and doctors, learned about their daily tasks, needs and pain points. We also conducted literature review to learn about medical errors and root causes that could help us improve our use case. In order to decide which interface would work best with this use case we went ahead and developed a set of design guidelines and principles that could be applied beyond the scope of this project. These guidelines included; 1. Enhancement and augmentation of the nurse’s abilities while maintaining a hands-free interaction with the patient. Instant access to information in order to expedite the decision making process. 2. Bridging geographic distances by improving access to subject experts. 3. Maintaining respect to individual privacy without interfering with human interaction. For these reasons we chose to couple Google Glass and InMemory technology into a system that would provide the caregiver with real-time access to relevant information. In this particular use case, the technology we chose was viable for the following reasons: nurses and doctors need to provide better care and the convenience of Glass would provide them with better access to data and a quick detection of human and system errors. Hospitals and insurance companies need accurate data to maintain the quality of care that they provide. This system is designed to reduce errors and automatically update the electronic medical records, while providing meaningful aggregated data for these entities to make better management decisions. Patients would directly benefit by receiving better, safer medical care. The result of our exploration was a redesign of the medication dispensing task by creating an application that will support the nurse from the beginning to the end of the shift. This application will help the nurse plan her activities, validate information, contact expert and record her tasks all hands free and in real time. We designed and deployed a set of screens to the Glass using Google’s Mirror API and produced a video at the end to convey the viability of the use case with the goal of further exploration and development.

Why this project is worthy of a UX Award:

Our project not only helps with raising awareness to a real problem within the healthcare industry but also brings about possible solutions. It highlights the needs of caregivers, and most importantly, the needs of the patient; which are to receive a better, safer health care. We utilized appropriate technologies to help caretakers improve care and reduce preventable, and potentially save people’s lives. Receiving and validating information in real time remotely and via glass, increases efficiency and eliminates any unnecessary delays and most importantly, errors. By exploring a specific task and applying the appropriate technology we were able to suggest an alternative solution that can enhance and improve the user experience.